Robert Schneider of The Apples In Stereo
By Jason Heller February 13, 2007

When Robert Schneider and friends set up a studio in their Denver apartment in the early '90s, there was no predicting that the sloppy group would evolve into The Apples In Stereo, one of the most influential indie bands of the decade. Along with Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples formed the core of Elephant 6, a collective that spread the gospel of psychedelia to a new generation. But after 2002's punky Velocity Of Sound, the Apples faded from view, and Schneider formed the new outfit Ulysses in his adopted Kentucky, and resurrected an old solo project, The Marbles. Now, with new members Bill Doss of OTC on keys and John Dufilho of The Deathray Davies on drums, The Apples have released the majestic New Magnetic Wonder on Elijah Wood's Simian imprint, and contributed to Yoko Ono's new remix album, Yes, I'm A Witch. The effervescent Schneider recently spoke with The A.V. Club about disillusionment, classic rock, and popping up on The Colbert Report during Stephen Colbert's guitar-solo challenge with The Decemberists' Chris Funk.

The A.V. Club: After the relative rawness of Velocity Of Sound, New Magnetic Wonder has a lot of flourishes and interludes, including "Non-Pythagorean Composition I" and "II." What's the story behind them?

Robert Schneider: Right around the time I did the last Marbles record, I invented a scale. I finally generated those tones on a sine-wave generator, and my brother-in-law turned them into a MIDI file that I can play on the keyboard. It's a 12-tone scale similar to all the black and white keys on a piano, but it attaches different notes to them. The higher the octave gets, the closer together the notes get. It's all based on logarithms. I used that scale to write "Non-Pythagorean Composition." I'm not sure if I'm the first person to ever think of this scale, but I'm sure that most people have never heard this sequence of notes, at least not on a rock album.

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